Basic Grey Jovial Collection

The Basic Grey ‘Jovial’ collection retails at around £21.99 in the UK and is widely available from online retailers worldwide.

Yes, the busiest time of the year for most of us.... Christmas. I have a list as long as my arm of things I ‘should’ be doing, but yet I ditched my list last night so that I could dig in to these papers and get a headstart on making my Christmas cards! This very fact is a huge selling point of these papers, for me. No matter how much I love crafting, I struggle to get excited about making my Christmas cards. I think it’s the sheer volume of cards required and the fact that I feel that I ‘should’ make them rather than ‘want’ to, that does it. The fact that I was looking forward to trying out these papers in a Christmas card making environment can only be a good thing!

In the pack you will find 18 double-sided papers, a sheet of alphabet stickers (in 2 colours) and a sheet of coordinating cardstock stickers. Basic Grey use FSC-certified papers and soy based inks (LOVE that smell when you take them out of the pack, it’s good for the soul!) to do their bit for the environment. If you’ve never tried BG papers before, you can rest assured that the quality is good. [And it’s worth buying them just to sniff that new BG paper smell ;)]

The papers are all well coordinated, but with enough variation that you could use the whole pack to make scrapbook pages and/or cards and they wouldn’t all look the same. There’s a good mix of subtle patterns with some bolder designs thrown in, and a mix of abstract patterns with more traditional Christmas motifs such as snowmen, poinsettias and gifts. I love that there are several papers that you can cut some of the motifs out of to make your own embellishments. You don’t have to think too hard about mixing the patterns, as they do work really well together. I like the way BG managed to mix traditional greens and reds with some cooler blues and make it work. The patterns are unique and not ‘just another’ Christmas line. It has a definite BG twist to it.

The sticker sheet is very useable, especially for cards. In fact, my son stole a lot of mine without me realising, and I am now the proud owner of a heavily-stickered Christmas card :) I do think it would be beneficial to have a few more stickers included, as there are enough papers to create a whole stack of cards and layouts, but you’d have to take it easy on the stickers if you didn’t want to add more from your stash – especially if you have a sticker-stealing child in the house!

In all, I’d recommend this collection for anyone who loves a good Christmas line and has a lot of cards to make, or layouts to get scrapped! The papers go a LONG way, and you could easily create a bunch of cards, a few layouts and a mini album from just 1 pack, if you’re prepared to add some extra stickers/embellishments.

I give this product 4 scissors – the only downside for me being the paper to sticker ratio :)